Kristo Vaher

Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

Tasty!

There’s this wonderful little snippet of information saying that if you eat seven bananas in succession, that’s it: you’re likely going to drop dead. This is because bananas include potassium, which can poison you, if consumed in large quantities. But as weird as that may sound, it makes you think about trying it out, doesn’t it? As you are reading this, you are already thinking back in your head if you have eaten that many bananas in succession?

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Keyboard smileys!

I must admit that I have read far too many articles on interactivity in recent weeks. But this has given me a couple of thoughts I would like to share. I dealt with interactivity in one of my recent posts in relation to a course I am taking in university, but I am now going to tackle the other side of the coin: the less ‘academically correct’ personal side. If we consider interactivity a property of technology that attempts to mimic and support – in the long run – as closely as possible interpersonal relationships, then this can have a serious impact on how we communicate and keep in touch in general. We have only recently been introduced to such a world, but it will be our children who will grow up in this new ‘network of emotions’, where we share private details of our lives with not only friends, but also strangers and have that impact on their perceptions of us.

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Shh!

This is a post written while keeping in mind the students at Tallinn University, but the same applies to any and every user of public WiFi. The original article that is being referred to is available here. It deals with a Firefox extension that can be used to listen in on public WiFi network communication.

The following is a must read, especially since the students use public WiFi in Tallinn University quite a bit. Programs have existed for the following for many years, but the fact that it is now available as a simple extension, is very problematic. In short, if you ever use a public unsecured WiFi, then you are in danger of your privacy being compromised just by another user in the same network, using a web browser with a small extension.

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A world within a world

This post is inspired by a video shared with me by a friend and an ex-colleague which brings attention to the fact that as we get surrounded more and more by technology, we often miss the magic of life, things that are there, with us, at arms length, yet what we may never notice by being ‘connected’ to online world with our handheld devices or computers in general.

Will our children not know the smell of new books?

Will our children never develop a crush with someone whose online profile they have not glanced at before?

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The Social Network

Please note that this is not review of the movie, but an opinion piece about its topics. For a review, I recommend a review from one of my most trusted reviewers, Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times.

David Fincher’s ‘The Social Network’ really is more of a movie about making enemies, than making those 500 million friends. But what the trailer depicts is not what the movie is really about. After seeing the trailer, I expected something entirely different. I expected what I guess Mark Zuckerberg  – one of the creators of The Facebook – expected, a movie that paints him as a monster. Instead it was a movie about our dreams, hopes and aspirations and how, at times, we exploit, manipulate and so completely cause self-conflict because of those things we like and want to achieve. The older generation will never understand and we can only hope that our experiences will be able to serve our children better. No one was holding our hand when the internet took over the world.

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New York City

It has been quite a while since I posted here last time, so I fear I have lost many of my readers. In relation to change of focus, I have also removed a large number of my older posts here in order to clear things up for what will be happening next.

So what has happened since I posted here last? I was in New York couple of weeks ago, I have put my open source content management system OriginNode on indefinite hold and I have re-entered Tallinn University and started with my Master’s degree studies, majoring in Interactive Media and Knowledge Environments. As a result, my readership is bound to get a small bump thanks to my fellow peers in the university and the fact that I am supposed to publish a number of essays and articles, related to my studies, right here.

I am also developing an innovative social collaboration and project management solution called NixyNet, which I intend to get somewhere together with the help of my studies. It is still unclear what my Master’s Thesis will involve in relation to the project, but when taking into account the fact that that the system involves complicated communication and data synchronization technologies, then there are more options than I can count on my fingers.

So to sum things up, I wish to all of my fellow readers and peers a wonderful year!

-K